S-OS

These indicators are used by government to measure ‘success’ and progress towards economic, social and environmental sustainability, calculating ‘quality’ by measuring ‘quantity’. They suggest that happiness lies somewhere at the end of a bell curve and that true love can be found in a slice of a pie chart.

i-DAT is developing a range of ‘Operating Systems’ to dynamically manifest ‘data’ as experience in order to enhance perspectives on a complex world. The Operating Systems project explores data as an abstract and invisible material that generates a dynamic mirror image of our biological, ecological and social activities.

S-OS is a collection of creative interventions and strategic actions that provide a new and more meaningful ‘algorithm’ for modelling social exchange, evaluation and impact, proposing a more effective ‘measure’ for ‘Quality of Life’.

The idea of a ‘Social Operating System’ has emerged through the prominence of OnLine Social Networking Software such as Facebook and Myspace. These websites, software that drives them and the online communities that thrive around them form a “platform for online living where all social activities are integrated.” Wired (2007).

The S-OS project provides an Operating System for the social life of a City, community, or cultural event. It superimposes the notion of an ‘OnLine’ Social Operating System onto ‘RealLife’ human interactions, modelling, analysing and making visible social value.

Whilst town planners and architects model the ‘physical’ City and Highways Department’s model the ‘temporal’ ebb and flow of traffic in and around the City, S-OS will model the ‘invisible’ social exchanges of the City’s inhabitants.